Multiculturalism has some positive aspects but it is more about demographic diversity, a recognized hyphenated Canadianism, as well as funding for some formal and informal ethnic minority organisations in civil society.
Minority ethnic identity is not truly respected as part of the larger Canadian identity when there are Anglophones and Francophones and others are labeled as Allophones.
Some in Canada like to identify multiculturalism and Aboriginal issues overlapping around concerns of racism and discrimination. To this discussion I assert that our First Nations peoples and their concerns that must not be linked with ethnic minorities as their official rights and the government’s obligations predate this Act with Aboriginal self-government rights. Canada officially is a bilingual and a multicultural country with Aboriginal peoples left out of this debate.
Multiculturalism is not only about visible minority groups, it includes all immigrant groups such as Italians, Greeks, and Portuguese. If Multiculturalism in Canada had initially been demanded by non-European rather than the Ukrainians in the West and Italians who were a large ethnic group in the GTA, European groups who were perceived by the dominant founding groups as having strong religious ties and liberal practice that fit into their Canadian mosaic, rather than groups like the Tamils from Sri Lanka, Muslims from Pakistan, immigrants from China, India, Somalia or the Middle East with cultural commitments to illiberal practices, and if their demand for multiculturalism was perceived as a demand for such illiberal practices to be tolerated and accommodated, then I am quite sure that this Act would have been written differently or stayed Bicultural.
Today we have a Multicultural Act – Is it working: I say NO!